William was so good today. Since Terry was so good to watch William all day and all evening yesterday, I took him all day and evening today.

We did our usual thing in the morning; after W eats upstairs, we play a bit in the bed then go downstairs for his 2nd breakfast when he starts to get fussy. He plays while I cook, then I feed him, then he's tired and it's naptime.

We left around 11:30am to go to his most recent psych experiment. This one was more involved than the last, they taped sensors to his back and under one eye. He ripped the wires off his face several times, but we finally got them on and made it part of the way through the experiment. The full experiment would have the kids watching video clips (each only a few seconds long with breaks in between) for eight minutes. With sensors on them. William did not make it that long before ripping the sensors off again. But the experiment girls were very pleased, apparently they don't the kids to sit through the whole thing to get usable data. Good thing, I don't know if I could have stood to watch that stuff for eight minutes myself, and my attention span, deficient as it is is probably longer than the average 8-month-old, even without meds.

The takeaway from today is that William really liked one of the car toys they had there. It had sort of "popcorn" rattle balls under a dome in the middle of the car (think popemobile) that popped when the car moved. And it was one of those things that you pull it backwards then it rolls forwards on its own for a bit. William was fascinated by it. It was plastic, but nevertheless pretty cute so I'll keep my eye out for one. But I won't get it for him until after Christmas, lest someone get him one as a gift (hint for any grandparent that might be reading this. . .).

I was probably hungrier than Will when we got out of there, so I headed straight for Hotcakes for lunch. I figured they'd have something he could eat so he could have something more interesting than baby sauce. Good choice-- I got a bit of seaweed salad for him.

Seaweed wasn't on the Parents magazine list of food groups to feed your baby, but I thought it would be good to give it a try. The seaweed salad wasn't spicy, but it was flavored with some sesame seeds and the usual stuff in a seaweed salad. It did of course have the very distinctive taste of seaweed.

I put a big pile of the stuff on his baby spoon, but he took one look at it and turned his head away when I brought the spoon near. I think this was the first time he took a dislike to food before he even tasted it! But I really thought he would think it's ok if he tried it, plus I didn't have anything else for him to eat until my own sandwich showed up which I knew would take a while, so I really wanted him to eat the seaweed. So I just pinched off a bit in my fingers and stuffed it in his mouth.

Sure enough, he ate it. Then I took another pinch and put it in his hand and let him feed himself. Then I took another bit and kind of gathered it up so it didn't look long and stringy but like a little green ball, and he let me pop that into his mouth. Those three bites were all it took for him to acquire a taste for seaweed. After that, he opened his mouth wide for me to feed him more. He still didn't care for the look of it hanging off the spoon, so I just popped bits into his mouth with my fingers. He would from time to time have bits hanging out of his mouth while he ate. He looked like a little baby seamonster! I took a photo with my phone camera, but it really didn't do justice to the situation.

Lunch took much longer than anticipated (won't bother with the story, but I wound up getting my sandwich for free, and also discovered that William loves pastrami), and then we went on to run several errands after that. I didn't get many groceries since William didn't get a good nap in at any point and was starting to fade, so we were home just before 4pm.

Which gave me time to drag the boys out of the house to pick out a Christmas tree! I decided to go with a juniper this year. The last time we had a very fresh pine, I remember it dripped sap all over the place. Plus, all the "little" scrubby pines we've got all over the place are actually over 10' tall by now. Clearing them has been on Terry's "to-do" list since 2003, and it's a much bigger job now. At least the scrubby juniper (I thought they were cedar, but we read in the local newspaper that they are technically juniper) grow slowly enough we can theoretically keep up with them. We found one that's under 9' at any rate.

I vaguely recall that trees need to acclimate to the warmer indoor temperatures, and I wonder if my failure to do that caused my previous sap problems. So the cut tree is in the garage, I'll have Terry set it up in the dining room tomorrow. I've selected the dining room for the tree since I don't have any rugs in that room, and did I mention I'm paranoid about the sap? I spent a looooong time scrubbing sticky sap off floors and nearby furniture before, it's NOT going to happen again. I don't even know if junipers have sap, but whatever. We spend a lot of time in the dining room since William takes a long time to eat, so that's where we'll try the tree this year.

I would have been able to put my Christmas cards in envelopes had Terry bothered to answer the door when the package arrived. But it needed a signature, and I guess the holiday guys don't know to just leave the packages on the porch no matter what (the regular guys never bother us for a signature, they have it on file that we waive that), so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how the cards turned out. I'm addressing envelopes for the out-of-town friends tonight, so hopefully it will arrive in time for me to at least get some of them in the mail tomorrow.

Overall, I accomplished everything on my to-do list today, so I'm pleased. And William didn't fuss much even though I was dragging him all over town, so that was good, too. I haven't made a list of things to do for tomorrow, but I think I'm going to make Wednesdays my "official" laundry day, so let's start with that.